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Hygienic Physiology

J >> Joel Dorman Steele >> Hygienic Physiology




SLEEP [Footnote: Sleep procured by medicine is rarely as beneficial as
that secured naturally. The disturbance to the nervous system is often
sufficient to counterbalance all the good results. The habit of seeking
sleep in this way, without the advice of a physician, is to be most
earnestly deprecated. The dose must be constantly increased to produce the
effect, and thus great injury may be caused. Often, too, where laudanum or
morphine is used, the person unconsciously comes into a terrible and fatal
bondage. (See p. 342.) Especially should infants never be dosed with
cordials, as is a common family practice. The damage done to helpless
childhood by the ignorant and reckless use of soothing syrups is frightful
to contemplate. All the ordinary sleeping draughts have life-destroying
properties, as is proved by the fatal effects of an overdose. At the best,
they paralyze the nerve centers, disorder the digestion, and poison the
blood. Their promiscuous use is therefore full of danger.] is as essential
as food. During the day, the process of tearing down goes on; during the
night, the work of building up should make good the loss. In youth more
sleep is needed than in old age, when nature makes few permanent repairs,
and is content with temporary expedients. The number of hours required for
sleep must be decided by each person. Napoleon took only five hours, but
most people need from six to eight hours,--brain workers even more. In
general, one should sleep until he naturally wakes. If one's rest be
broken, it should be made up as soon as possible. (See p. 334.)

SUNLIGHT.--The influence of the sun's rays upon the nervous system is very
marked. [Footnote: The necessity of light for young children is not half
appreciated. Many of their diseases, and nearly all the cadaverous looks
of those brought up in great cities, are ascribable to the deficiency of
light and air. When we see the glass room of the photographers in every
street, in the topmost story, we grudge them their application to what is
often a mere personal vanity. Why should not a nursery be constructed in
the same manner? If parents knew the value of light to the skin,
especially to children of a scrofulous tendency, we should have plenty of
these glass house nurseries, where children might run about in a proper
temperature, free from much of that clothing which at present seals up the
skin--that great supplementary lung--against sunlight and oxygen. They
would save many a weakly child who now perishes from lack of these
necessaries of infant life.--DR. WINTER.] It is said also to have the
effect of developing red disks in the blood. All vigor and activity come
from the sun. Vegetables grown in subdued light have a bleached and faded
look. An infant kept in absolute darkness would grow into a shapeless
idiot. That room is the healthiest to which the sun has the freest access.
Epidemics frequently attack the inhabitants of the shady side of a street,
and exempt those on the sunny side. If, on a slight indisposition, we
should go out into the open air and bright sunlight, instead of shutting
ourselves up in a close, dark chamber, we might often avoid a serious
illness. The sun bath is doubtless a most efficient remedy for many
diseases. Our window blinds and curtains should be thrown back and open,
and we should let the blessed air and sun stream in to invigorate and
cheer. No house buried in shade, and no room with darkened windows, is fit
for human habitation. In damp and darkness, lies in wait almost every
disease to which flesh is heir. The sun is their only successful foe. (See
p. 336.)

WONDERS OF THE BRAIN.--After having seen the beautiful contrivances and
the exquisite delicacy of the lower organs, it is natural to suppose that
when we come to the brain we should find the most elaborate machinery. How
surprising, then, it is to have revealed to us only cells and fibers! The
brain is the least solid and most unsubstantial looking organ in the body.
Eighty per cent of water, seven of albumen, some fat, and a few minor
substances constitute the instrument which rules the world. Strangest of
all, the brain, which is the seat of sensation, is itself without
sensation. Every nerve, every part of the spinal cord, is keenly alive to
the slightest touch, yet "the brain may be cut, burned, or electrified
without producing pain."

ALCOHOLIC DRINKS AND NARCOTICS.

ALCOHOL (Continued from p. 187).

EFFECT UPON THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.--In the progressive influence of alcohol
upon the nervous system, there are, according to the researches of Dr.
Richardson, four successive stages.

1. THE STAGE OF EXCITEMENT. [Footnote: The pupil should be careful to note
here that alcohol does not act upon the heart directly, and cause it to
contract with more force. The idea that alcohol gives energy and activity
to the muscles is entirely false. It really, as we have seen (p. 183),
weakens muscular contraction. The enfeeblement begins in the first stage,
and continues in the other stages with increased effect. The heart beats
quickly merely because the resistance of the minute controlling vessels is
taken off, and it works without being under proper regulation. _What is
called a stimulation or excitement is, in absolute fact, a relaxation, a
partial paralysis_ of one of the most important mechanisms in the
animal body. Alcohol should be ranked among the narcotics.--RICHARDSON.]--
The first effect of alcohol, as we have already described on page 144, is
to paralyze the nerves that lead to the extreme and minute blood vessels,
and so regulate the passage of the blood through the capillary system. The
vital force, thus drawn into the nervous centers, drives the machinery of
life with tremendous energy. The heart jumps like the mainspring of a
watch when the resistance of the wheels is removed. The blood surges
through the body with increased force. Every capillary tube in the system
is swollen and flushed, like the reddened nose and cheek.

In all this there is exhilaration, but no nourishment; there is animation,
but no permanent power conferred on brain or muscle. Alcohol may cheer for
the moment. It may set the sluggish blood in motion, start the flow of
thought, and excite a temporary gayety. "It may enable a wearied or feeble
organism to do brisk work for a short time. It may make the brain briefly
brilliant. It may excite muscle to quick action, but it does nothing at
its own cost, fills up nothing it has destroyed, and itself leads to
destruction." Even the mental activity it has excited is an unsafe state
of mind, for that just poise of the faculties so essential to good
judgment is disturbed by the presence of the intruder. Johnson well
remarked, "Wine improves conversation by taking the edge off the
understanding."

2. THE STAGE OF MUSCULAR WEAKNESS.--If the action of the alcohol be still
continued, the spinal cord is next affected by this powerful narcotic. The
control of some of the muscles is lost. Those of the lower lip usually
fail first, then those of the lower limbs, and the staggering, uncertain
steps betray the result. The muscles themselves, also, become feebler as
the power of contraction diminishes. The temperature, which, for a time,
was slightly increased, soon begins to fall as the heat is radiated; the
body is cooled, and the well-known "alcoholic chill" is felt.

3. THE STAGE OF MENTAL WEAKNESS.--The cerebrum is now implicated. The
ideal and emotional faculties are quickened, while the will is weakened.
The center of thought being overpowered, the mind is a chaos. Ideas flock
in thick and fast. The tongue is loosened. The judgment loses its hold on
the acts. The reason giving way, the animal instincts generally assume the
mastery of the man. The hidden nature comes to the surface. All the gloss
of education and social restraint falls off, and the lower nature stands
revealed. The coward shows himself more craven, the braggart more
boastful, the bold more daring, and the cruel more brutal. The inebriate
is liable to become the perpetrator of any outrage that the slightest
provocation may suggest.

4. THE STAGE OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS.--At last, prostration ensues, and the
wild, mad revel of the drunkard ends with utter senselessness. In common
speech, the man is "dead drunk." Brain and spinal cord are both benumbed.
Fortunately, the two nervous centers which supply the heart and the
diaphragm are the slowest to be influenced. So, even in this final stage,
the breathing and the circulation still go on, though the other organs
have stopped. Were it not for this, every person thoroughly intoxicated
would die. [Footnote: Cold has a wonderful influence in hastening this
stage, so that a person, previously only in the first stage of excitement,
on going outdoors on a winter night, may rapidly sink into a lethargy
(become _comatose_), fall, and die. He is then commonly said to have
perished with cold. The signs of this coma are of great practical
importance, since so many persons die in police stations and elsewhere who
are really comatose, when they are supposed to be only sound asleep. The
pulse is slow, and almost imperceptible. The face is pale, and the skin
cold. "If the arm be pinched, it is not moved; if the eyeballs are
touched, the lids will not sink." The respiration becomes slower and
slower, and, if the person dies, it is because liquid collects in the
bronchial tubes, and stops the passage of the air. The man then actually
drowns in his own secretions.]

EFFECT UPON THE BRAIN.--Alcohol seems to have a special affinity for the
brain. This organ absorbs more than any other, and its delicate structure
is correspondingly affected. The "Vascular enlargement" here reaches its
height. The tiny vessels become clogged with blood that is unfitted to
nourish, because loaded with carbonic acid, and deprived of the usual
quantity of the life-giving oxygen.--HINTON. The brain is, in the language
of the physiologist, malfunctioned. The mind but slowly rallies from the
stupor of the fourth stage, and a sense of dullness and depression remains
to show with what difficulty the fatigued organ recovers its normal
condition. So marked is the effect of the narcotic poison, that some
authorities hold that "a once thoroughly intoxicated brain never fully
becomes what it was before."

In time, the free use of liquor hardens and thickens the membrane
enveloping the nervous matter; the nerve corpuscles undergo a "Fatty
degeneration"; the blood vessels lose their elasticity; and the vital
fluid, flowing less freely through the obstructed channels, fails to
afford the old-time nourishment. The consequent deterioration of the
nervous substance--the organ of thought--shows itself in the weakened mind
[Footnote: The habitual use of fermented liquors, even to an extent far
short of what is necessary to produce intoxication, injures the body, and
diminishes the mental power.--Sir Henry Thompson.] that we so often notice
in a person accustomed to drink, and at last lays the foundation of
various nervous disorders--epilepsy, paralysis, and insanity. [Footnote:
Casper, the great statistician of Berlin, says: "So far as that city is
concerned, one third of the insane coming from the poorer classes, were
made so by spirit drinking."] The law of heredity here again asserts
itself, and the inebriate's children often inherit the disease which he
has escaped.

Chief among the consequences of this perverted and imperfect nutrition of
the brain is that intermediate state between intoxication and insanity,
well known as Delirium Tremens. "It is characterized by a low, restless
activity of the cerebrum, manifesting itself in muttering delirium, with
occasional paroxysms of greater violence. The victim almost always
apprehends some direful calamity; he imagines his bed to be covered with
loathsome reptiles; he sees the walls of his apartment crowded with foul
specters; and he imagines his friends and attendants to be fiends come to
drag him down to a fiery abyss beneath."--CARPENTER. (See p. 287.)

INFLUENCE UPON THE MENTAL AND MORAL POWERS.--So intimate is the relation
between the body and the mind, that an injury to one harms the other. The
effect of alcoholized blood is to weaken the will. The one habitually
under its influence often shocks us by his indecision and his readiness to
break a promise to reform. The truth is, he has lost, in a measure, his
power of self-control. At last, he becomes physically unable to resist the
craving demand of his morbid appetite.

Other faculties share in this mental wreck. The intellectual vision
becomes less penetrating, the decisions of the mind less reliable, and the
grasp of thought less vigorous. The logic grows muddy. A thriftless,
reckless feeling is developed. Ere long, self-respect is lost, and then
ambition ceases to allure, and the high spirit sinks.

Along with this mental deterioration comes also a failure of the moral
sense. The fine fiber of character undergoes a "degeneration" as certain
as that of the muscles themselves. Broken promises tell of a lowered
standard of veracity, and a dulled sense of honor, quite as much as of an
impaired will. Under the subtle influence of the ever-present poison,
signs of spiritual weakness multiply fast. Conscience is lulled to rest.
Reason is enfeebled. Customary restraints are easily thrown off. The
sensibilities are blunted. There is less ability to appreciate nice shades
of right and wrong. Great moral principles and motives lose their power to
influence. The judgment fools with duty. The future no longer reaches back
its hand to guide the present. The better nature has lost its supremacy.

The wretched victim of appetite will now gratify his tyrannical passion
for drink at any expense of deceit or crime. He becomes the blind
instrument of his insane impulses, and commits acts from which he would
once have shrunk with horror. [Footnote: Richardson sums up the various
diseases caused by alcohol, as follows: "(_a_). Diseases of the brain
and nervous system, indicated by such names as apoplexy, epilepsy,
paralysis, vertigo, softening of the brain, delirium tremens, dipsomania
or inordinate craving for drink, loss of memory, and that general failure
of the mental power, called dementia. (_b_). Diseases of the lungs:
one form of consumption, congestion, and subsequent bronchitis.
(_c_). Diseases of the heart: irregular beat, feebleness of the
muscular walls, dilatation, disease of the valves. (_d_). Diseases of
the blood: scurvy, excess of water or dropsy, separation of fibrin.
(_e_). Diseases of the stomach: feebleness of the stomach,
indigestion, flatulency, irritation, and sometimes inflammation.
(_f_). Diseases of the bowels: relaxation or purging, irritation.
(_g_). Diseases of the liver: congestion, hardening and shrinking,
cirrhosis. (_h_). Diseases of the kidneys: change of structure into
fatty or waxy-like condition and other results leading to dropsy, or
sometimes to fatal sleep. (_i_). Diseases of the muscles: fatty
change in the muscles, by which they lose their power for proper active
contraction. (_j_). Diseases of the membranes of the body: thickening
and loss of elasticity, by which the parts wrapped up in the membrane are
impaired for use, and premature decay is induced."] Sometimes he even
takes a malignant pleasure in injuring those whom Nature has ordained he
should protect. [Footnote: It has been argued that a man should not be
punished for any crime he may commit during intoxication, but rather for
knowingly giving up the reins of reason and conscience, and thus
subjecting himself to the rule of his evil passions. Voluntarily to
stimulate the mind and put it into a condition where it may drive one to
ruin, is very like the act of an engineer who should get up steam in his
engine, and then, having opened the valves, desert his post, and let the
monster go thundering down the track to sure destruction. Certain persons
are thrown into the stage of mental weakness by a single glass of liquor.
How can they be excused when the fact of their peculiar liability lends
additional force to the argument of abstemiousness, and they know that
their only safety lies in total abstinence?--CARPENTER'S
_Physiology._]

2. TOBACCO.

The Constituents of Tobacco Smoke are numerous, but the prominent ones are
carbonic-acid, carbonic-oxide, and ammonia gases; carbon, or soot; and
nicotine. The proportion of these substances varies with different kinds
of tobacco, the pipe used, and the rapidity of the combustion. Carbonic
acid tends to produce sleepiness and headache. Carbonic oxide, in
addition, causes a tremulous movement of the muscles, and so of the heart.
Ammonia bites the tongue of the smoker, excites the salivary glands, and
causes dryness of the mouth and throat. Nicotine is a powerful poison. The
amount contained in one or two strong cigars, if thrown directly into the
blood, would cause death. Nicotine itself is complex, yielding a volatile
substance that gives the odor to the breath and clothing; and also a
bitter extract which produces the sickening taste of an old pipe. In
smoking, some of the nicotine is decomposed, forming pyridine, picoline,
and other poisonous alkaloids. [Footnote: The analysis of tobacco as given
by different authorities varies greatly. The one stated in the text
suffices for the purposes of this chapter. Von Eulenberg names several
other products of the combustion. One hundred pounds of the dry leaf may
yield as high as seven pounds of nicotine. Havana tobacco contains about
two per cent, and Virginia about six per cent.--See JOHNSTON & CHURCH'S
_Chemistry of Common Life_, and MILLER'S _Organic Chemistry_.]

PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS.--The poison of tobacco, set free by the process
either of chewing or smoking, when for the first time it is swept through
the system by the blood, powerfully affects the body. Nausea is felt, and
the stomach seeks to throw off the offending substance. The brain is
inflamed, and headache follows. The motor nerves becoming irritated,
giddiness ensues. Thus Nature earnestly protests against the formation of
this habit. But, after repeated trials, the system adjusts itself to the
new conditions. A "tolerance" of the poison is finally established, and
smoking causes none of the former symptoms. Such powerful substances can
not, however, be constantly inhaled without producing marked changes. The
three great eliminating organs--the lungs, the skin, and the kidneys--
throw off a large part of the products, but much remains in the system.
When the presence of the poison is constant, and especially when the
smoking or chewing is excessive, the disturbance that at first is merely
functional, must necessarily, in many cases at least, lead to a chronic
derangement.

Probably in this, as in the case of other deleterious articles of diet,
the strong and healthy will seem to escape entirely, while the weak and
those predisposed to disease will be injured in direct proportion to the
extent of the indulgence. Those whose employment leads to active, outdoor
work, will show no sign of nicotine poisoning, while the man of sedentary
habits will sooner or later be the victim of dyspepsia, sleeplessness,
nervousness, paralysis, or other organic difficulties. Even where the user
of tobacco himself escapes harm, the law of heredity asserts itself, and
the innocent offspring only too often inherit an impaired constitution,
and a tendency to nervous complaints.

THE VARIOUS DISTURBANCES produced in different individuals and
constitutions by smoking have been summed up by Dr. Richardson as follows:
"(_a_) In the blood, it causes undue fluidity, and change in the red
corpuscles; (_b_) in the stomach, it gives rise to debility, nausea,
and vomiting; (_c_) in the mucous membrane of the mouth, it produces
enlargement and soreness of the tonsils--smoker's sore throat--redness,
dryness, and occasional peeling of the membrane, and either unnatural
firmness and contraction, or sponginess of the gums; and, where the pipe
rests on the lips, oftentimes 'epithelial cancer'; (_d_) in the
heart, it causes debility of the organ, and irregular action; (_e_)
in the bronchial surface of the lungs, when that is already irritable, it
sustains irritation, and increases the cough; (_f_) in the organs of
sense, it produces dilation of the pupils of the eye, confusion of vision,
bright lines, luminous or cobweb specks, and long retention of images on
the retina, with analogous symptoms affecting the ear, viz., inability to
define sounds clearly, and the occurrence of a sharp, ringing noise like a
whistle; (_g_) in the brain, it impairs the activity of the organ,
oppressing it if it be nourished, but soothing it if it be exhausted;
(_h_) it leads to paralysis in the motor and sympathetic nerves, and
to over-secretion from the glands which the sympathetic nerves control."

IS TOBACCO A FOOD?--Here, as in the case of alcohol, the reply is a
negative one. Tobacco manifests no characteristic of a food. It can not
impart to the blood an atom of nutritive matter for building up the body.
It does not add to, but rather subtracts from, the total vital force. It
confers no potential power upon muscle or brain. It stimulates by cutting
off the nervous supply from the extremities and concentrating it upon the
centers. But stimulation is not nourishment; it is only a rapid spending
of the capital stock. There is no greater error than to mistake the
exciting of an organ for its strengthening.

THE INFLUENCE UPON YOUTH.--Here, too, science utters no doubtful voice.
Experience asserts only one conviction. _Tobacco retards the development
of mind and body._ [Footnote: Cigarettes are especially injurious from
the irritating smoke of the paper covering, taken into the lungs, and also
because the poison fumes of the tobacco are more directly inhaled. In case
of the cheap cigarettes often smoked by boys the ingredients used are
harmful, while one revolts at the thought of the filthy materials, refuse
cigar stumps, etc., employed in their manufacture.] The law of nature is
that of steady growth. It can not admit of a daily, even though it be
merely a functional, disturbance that weakens the digestion, that causes
the heart to labor excessively, that prevents the perfect oxidation of the
blood, that interferes with the assimilation, and that deranges the
nervous system. [Footnote: There is one influence of tobacco that every
young man should understand. In many cases, like alcohol, it seems to
blunt the sensibilities, and to make its user careless of the rights and
feelings of others. This is often noticed in common life. We meet
everywhere "devotees of the weed," who, ignoring the fact that tobacco is
disagreeable to many persons, think only of the gratification of their
selfish appetite. They smoke or chew in any place or company. They permit
the cigar fumes to blow into the faces of passers-by. They sit where the
wind carries the smoke of their pipes so that others must inhale it. They
expectorate upon the floor of cars, hotels, and even private homes. They
take no pains to remove the odor that lingers about their person and
clothing. They force all who happen to be near, their companions, their
fellow-travelers, to inhale the nauseating odor of tobacco. Everything
must be sacrificed to the one primal necessity of such persons--a smoke.
Now, a young man just beginning life, with his fortune to make, and his
success to achieve, can not afford to burden himself with a habit that is
costly, that will make his presence offensive to many persons, and that
may perhaps render him less sensitive to the best influences and
perceptions of manhood.] No one has a right thus to check and disturb
continually the regular processes of his physical and mental progress.
Hence, the young man (especially if he be of a nervous, sensitive
organization) who uses tobacco deliberately diminishes the possible energy
with which he might commence the work of life; [Footnote: In the
Polytechnic School at Paris, the pupils were divided into two classes--the
smokers, and the non-smokers. The latter not only excelled on the entrance
examinations, but during the entire course of study. Dr. Decaisne examined
thirty-eight boys who smoked, and found twenty-seven of them diseased from
nicotine poisoning. So long ago as 1868, in consequence of these results,
the Minister of Public Instruction forbade the use of tobacco by the
pupils.

Dr. Gihon, medical director of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, in his
report for 1881, says: "The most important matter in the health history of
the students is that relating to tobacco, and its interdiction is
absolutely essential to their future health and usefulness. In this view I
have been sustained by my colleagues, and by all sanitarians in civil and
military life whose views I have been able to obtain."] while he comes
under the bondage of a habit that may become stronger than his will, and
under the influence of a narcotic that may beguile his faculties and palsy
his strength at the very moment when every power should be awake.

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